Hidden Beneath Brown Eyes (A Zayn Malik Fanfiction)

Chapter 73 - Star Gazing

WARNING! THIS CHAPTER CONTAINS SEXUAL CONTENT!

"Answer me right now, Ada! Do you love me?"

"W-What?" I squeaked, frozen where I stood.

My blood running cold in my veins, and my face turning a ghostly pale, I slowly twirled around to look at Zayn. He was standing firm, right where my eyes had left him when I turned to go inside. His feet where spaced apart, and his fists were clenched at his sides - his jaw was locked up tight and his eyes were fixed on me, that spark I saw earlier had ignited into a flame and I knew it would only intensify from here.

"You heard me." he asserted, his expression focused and provoking.

"Zayn, I-I" I stuttered, unable to form a coherent sentence.

It had been five years since I last spoke those words to him, and even then he hadn't heard me say them. I always knew that the day would come when I'd have to come clean about my feelings, but I never anticipated that day being so soon. I always imagined that it would be in the distant future, after both of us were happily married to other people and had families of our own, and it would be something to laugh about. I never expected to be put on the spot like this.

"Ada, just answer the question. Do. You. Love me?" Zayn demanded impatiently.

He and I both knew the answer to that. It was just a matter of whether or not I'd admit to it. I felt stuck, really stuck. For the first time since I'd found him again, the possibility of losing him for good had just slapped me in the face. I never thought it would come down to this. I always thought we'd just live with this unrequited love until we died.

"Zayn, I can't. You...you can't just...you can't." I muttered, unable to make any sense of the emotions that were spiraling out of control in my head.

"You can't what, Ada? You can't admit how you feel about me? Is this some kind of pride thing?!" he cried, sucking in a deep breath and taking a few steps towards me.

"No! Y-You don't...you don't understand!" I choked out, trying desperately to buy myself some time to think.

"Then help me to understand! Make me! I want to understand!" he pleaded, taking a few more steps forward and wrapping his fingers tightly around both my arms.

My mind was spinning, and this was all happening way to fast for me to think rationally or even keep up with it. My eyes begged him, as his begged me. He had the look of a wild, unstable, and unpredictable man. It was the same look that I had fallen in love with all those years ago, and it was busting down every last wall I'd built up around myself. Slicing through them as if they were paper.

"I can't make you understand, because I don't even understand!" I blurted out, my chest heaving up and down as silence descended upon us.

Zayn looked startled, like a deer in the headlights. I don't think he'd planned for any of this to happen, but at that moment, he looked truly lost. His grip on my arms stayed as his eyes darted up and down my body, searching for any kind of answer that would make sense, any clue as to what was going on in my head.

"Zayn," I sighed, looking at him with sad eyes. "You know that I have feelings for you. Otherwise, I wouldn't have come back. I found you because I wanted to, because I needed to. I needed to know-"

"Ada, I love you." he confessed, bluntly and with an unwavering sense of pride, and a subtle hint of apprehension. He said it like he had never been more sure of anything in his life. And he said it hoping that it would grab my attention, and that is exactly what it did.

I immediately shut up, and even if I'd wanted to, there was no way I could have gone on talking as if he hadn't just said what he did. I knew that this was his last weapon, his atomic bomb, his final stand. I knew that he was giving it absolutely everything he had. And I also knew that I had run out of time to think about it.